


VCR player

by physically_affectionate



Series: Clirk Universe [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, clirk, whotrek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:19:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/physically_affectionate/pseuds/physically_affectionate





	VCR player

Clara expects that out of every person in all of space and time, Jim Kirk is the person who is going to completely understand that she doesn't belong in one place. It seems though, that love does funny things to even the best of us.

She has spent a lot of time - and by a lot, she means in time lord proportions - trying to find the middle ground. She knows she can always come back to this time, to this idiot boy with a bloody nose and kiss it better. She can come back tomorrow in linear time, and she can still see the world. But will Jim know how long she has been gone? He'll smell another man on her clothes and know that she picked the Doctor over him. Maybe from the start it was already over, because with the universe at her doorstep, she knows what she believes in. How can she pray for him to love her when she returns if she's seen planets explode and watched men die and travel with a man so dark that he's his own colour? If she goes back, will her skin be withered and her heart black? Will Jim still be bright or will he be broken by a choice that was never his? 

She wonders if it's maybe because she loves him too much. She knows that if she goes, he'll have a great love. An all encompassing love that will fill him and change him - she's seen his future, read his bibliography. She knows that he'll have a son with Leonard McCoy, if she leaves, and the son will be called Clarus. She's not blind- she knows that her name.[i] Clear, bright, famous[/i]. She knows the son will go on to open the first academy division around time travel, and she'll wonder if it was because of her. She'll wonder if Jim told her as a bed time story, while Leo would just scoff at the idea of time travel. 

But that will never stop her from asking the Doctor for an old fashioned VCR player. She'll watch and record when he gets his service medallion, she'll tell the Doctor that "He did it, he made it," and the Doctor will offer words of comfort. But even the comfort of a best friend won't stop her from rewinding the tape over and over again until it's broken, and once it's broken, she won't bring herself to ask to go back and see it again.

Because her life is not for her, no. It's for the Doctor, to save him, to save space and time. But in the corners of her mind, she does it to save the universe in which Jim still lives and breathes and loves. She does it to save Leonard McCoy who makes Jim happy. Because this she can give him: life through sacrifice.


End file.
